On Monday morning, I went to the gym. It was pretty much a ghost town. Now there are a number of reasons, which I won't get into here, that could explain why there were only a couple of people working out. But I can't help but believe that concerns about COVID-19 is one of them.
My gym is in the heart of downtown Boston, and when I walked out afterwards, the city seemed sort of deserted. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but there didn't seem to be as many people out and about. There's always plenty of energy in this area, and late Monday morning it just seemed to be lacking.
I went into the grocery store to grab a few things, and it wasn't as crowded as it usually is just before noon.
Or so it seemed.
On Tuesday, I worked my usual shift at St. Francis House, a day shelter for the poor and homeless. I was relieved to find SFH as hopping as usual. Or was I? After all, our guests are among the most vulnerable to outbreaks of anything. Many of them spend the night on beds in dorm facilities, we're they're cheek to jowl with hundreds of others, most in varying degree of ill health.
Given our population, we're all - including most of the guests - already pretty aware of health protocols. Hand sanitizer is all over the place. When someone who seems more germy than the norm checks in at the desk, we wipe it down with Clorox wipes.
A few weeks back, a fellow came in, pulled up his sleeve, and announced that he had scabies. His arm was a livid red and purple. It may have been my imagination, but I could swear I saw mites burrowing under his skin.
He wanted to take a shower, but I directed him to the clinic. When he left, my colleague sprung up and scrubbed the countertop down. I bee-lined into the restroom and did the near-boiling-water surgical scrub of my hands. I'd only handled a pencil that this fellow had held, and scabies is transmitted by far closer contact. Still, it was all pretty unsettling.
And now there's novel corona virus to worry about. And worry about it we all should all, given that the US Senate was just given a closed-door briefing at which attendees were told that anywhere from 70-150 million people could contract COVID-19 before this is all over. 150 million is nearly half the population. At a 1% mortality rate - and no one knows what the mortality rate is - that's 1.5 million fatalities. Yikes. Will they be sending wagons into the streets so we can bring out the bodies like they did during plagues of yore?
Anyway, I've become a lot more conscious of better habits in the last week or so, Lady MacBething it up with the hand washing. And then some.
Other changes, too. I was introduced to a new employee at SFH and he put his hand out. I smiled and told him I was now offering the Hawaiian greeting - the one that looks like hook 'em horns - or the Namaste head bow. Later, a colleague there went to give me a high-five, which is pretty much our standard greeting. I converted it to the fist bump.
One of my tasks is checking folks in, which means taking the card from the hand of the guest and running it under a scanner. I'm now either having the guest hold the card while I run the scanner over it, or - failing that - sanitizing my hands after I touch the card.
At my recent physical, my doctor asked whether I wore gloves and a mask when working with the homeless population. Yes, we wear gloves when preparing and serving food, but for our regular interactions, I told her that gloves (let alone a mask) would be a barrier, an implication that there's something about our guests that should be shunned. I won't be wearing a mask, but I'm thinkng of donning gloves when I'm handing pencils, Q-tips and bars of soap to our folks.
And I'm also thinking about stepping away from volunteering for a bit.
I'm not quite there yet.
My volunteer work is a big part of what I do. I have two days each week (one half-day, one full day) when I'm always there, and I tend to pick up a shift or two in clothing or the kitchen when they're in extra need of volunteers. Much of the work I do doesn't involve direct guest contact, but it's the direct guest contact that I enjoy the most.
In addition to being a volunteer there, I'm also on the board of St. Francis House. We have a board meeting next week, and I'm pretty sure that the coronavirus is going to be up for discussion. And I will have a few questions about what extra precautions are being taken. For employees, for guests, and for volunteers.
I know that we'll be facing a volunteer shortage. A good percentage of our volunteers are college students. They're all being sent home and will be taking all their courses virtually. (One reason Boston is turning into a ghosttown.) A good percentage of our volunteers are employee groups who come in regularly and irregularly. If these folks all start working from home, or if their companies stop encouraging volunteering, well, those groups will disappear for a while.
Then there are the retirees, a cadre in their 60's, 70's and 80's who make up the bulk of the weekday volunteers. Us retirees? We're all on the "more susceptible" side of the coronavirus equation.
I'll be making my decision after the board meeting, but I'm leaning towards taking a couple of weeks off. I believe I'm healthy enough to withstand a bout with COVID-19. The mortality rates are high for the elderly with multiple health conditions, which isn't the case with me. But I sure don't want to turn into Typhoid Mary for family and friends.
On the other hand, if half the population will end up getting it within the next year or so, why not just get it over with rather than sit home staring at the four walls.
And I really don't want to abandon ship. Who's going to sign folks up for the shower? Who's going to show new volunteers how to work the combo locks on the lockers? Who's going to know what kind of bagel Cyril wants (sesame) when he comes through the line? Who's going to wince at Phil's terrible jokes?
How will the large and vulnerable group of folks we work with withstand a pandemic?
Every once in a while, we hear about one of our guests who's died. Sometimes it's okay: George was pretty old, he had a lot of health problems, he died in his apartment. (Many of our guests are housed, but come to St. Francis House for services and companionship.) Sometimes those deaths are less okay: Andres was a drinker who froze to death last winter.
Are we going to start hearing about a lot of our guests being impacted? Is it prudent or chickenshit to bail out on volunteering with them?
Meanwhile, Boston's feeling ghost town-ish.
Not that I was going to go, but the St. Patrick's Day Parade has been canceled. Conventions have been called off. So's business travel. In person meetings. They're talking about canceling the Boston Marathon. About having the Celtics and Bruins play at an empty Boston Garden. About relocating baseball games to places where there's no outbreak reported. Yet.
Last night, I went out for a little early-evening spin. (Truth: I wanted a burrito from Boloco.) I walked by a few restaurants along the way. On a Wednesday night, nice weather, you'd expect them to be packed. But no. Mostly empty, and not in a half-empty/half-full kind of way. So, look for more and more restaurants to lay-off staff, most who likely can't financially withstand too much of a lay-off shock.
Of the areas in the US most impacted, Boston is right up there after Seattle, NY, and SF-Silicon Valley. No, we're not Wuhan or Northern Italty. But we have a number of cases, and these things take off fast. We've got great medical facilities, but they could easily become overwhelmed.
I hope all the things people are doing to "flatten the curve" so that the spread is spread out. I hope it turns out not to be as bad as it could be - maybe 7 to 15 million folks getting sick, not 70 to 150 million. I hope that no one I know gets sick, let alone dies. And that goes for my buds at St. Francis House.
I sure hate Boston turning into a ghost town.
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